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Importance of Clinical Judgement in Nurses

Emma Ericson

Centofanti School of Nursing, Youngstown State University

NURS , Nursing Capstone

Dr. Randi Heasley

March 1, 2024
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Importance of Clinical Judgement in Nurses

Clinical judgement is one of the crucial components of successful nursing and patient

outcomes. Nursing judgement has become even more important in recent years. COVID-19 was

something that no healthcare professional had ever seen before. New techniques and technology

are changing the ways that nurses must perform. Nursing school prepares students by exposing

them to real life scenarios and evidence-based practice in lectures. Throughout nursing school,

the foundation of this judgement is learned in lecture. After students understand it, then in-person

clinical experience reiterates this process. Thus, the name ‘clinical nursing judgement.’ Students

learn through real life situations and gain nursing intuition from this. Clinical judgement is

making health-related decisions based on prior knowledge and experience. Making these

decisions are a huge part of being a nurse and caring for patients (Victor, 2017). For example, a

student/nurse who has been involved in taking care of open-heart surgery patients will learn key

information about this topic. This prior experience prepares the nurse to make informed

decisions about open-heart surgery for patients in the future. Watching/seeing something in

person is an effective way for nurses to learn. Clinical judgement is seen outside of nursing in the

healthcare field, as well. Doctors use clinical judgement to make health decisions. In healthcare,

you learn from experience. Students can learn as much in the classroom as they want. Hands-on

experience is where the real learning happens. Quality patient care is the foundation of nursing

and prior knowledge has a big effect on this. The use of clinical nursing judgement is not going

to be taken out of nursing. It will always be relevant to the role of the nurse. The concept of

clinical nursing judgement gives students and nurses the confidence to perform their care for the

patients.
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There are a lot of different reasons for why clinical judgement is so important in the role

of nursing. Clinical judgement plays a key role in determining outcomes in crucial situations.

Competent judgement can be the difference between life or death. When a person decides to

become a nurse, they are vowing to take care of others in their hardest times. Ensuring adequate

and purposeful care comes from clinical judgement (Connor, 2022). This is also why clinical

experience and preceptorship is so important for nursing students, too. Learning from experience

and actually seeing different situations in healthcare helps with learning. Nurses are with their

patients all throughout the day, they see things that doctors aren’t always able to. When a

patient’s status takes a turn for the worse, it is the nurse’s job to alert the doctor. The nurse must

know when to take action and this is where clinical judgement comes into play. Healthcare is

constantly changing from year to year. This requires nurses to learn more than ever and must

adapting to these changes (Calcagni, 2022). From technology to new developments in diagnoses

nurses are required to keep up with the knowledge and education that goes along with the job. A

competent nurse has the clinical judgement to provide safe care, too. Two different nurses, one

with good clinical judgement and one without, will make different decisions on patients’ care. If

a nurse is incompetent, the patient can tell just from reading him/her. Poor clinical judgement can

lead to delayed care and when the decision is finally made, it may be too late (Calcagni, 2022).

Nurses make the hard decisions when it comes to patients, so they must be prepared for all. After

a clinical experience, it is also important for a student/nurse to reflect back on what happened

during that shift. It helps to better understand what occurred and what could have been done

better (Calcagni, 2022). The experience is vital to a nurse’s career and their judgement will
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improve as they grow in the healthcare field. They will become exposed to new things every shift

and will continue to learn. This will contribute to quality patient care and communication.

Throughout my 4 years of nursing school, I have learned more than I have ever imagined

possible. Clinicals have exposed to me to very different kinds of patients with different

problems. Clinical nursing judgement has played a significant role in clinical experience and

work. For instance, I took care of a patient who was an intravenous drug user. She had come into

the hospital for random chest pain that had just started. This patient ended up staying in the

hospital for 3 weeks due to infectious endocarditis. She was placed into the ICU on bedrest, and

eventually was intubated. By the time I had her as a patient, she was on week 3 of bedrest and

placed onto a step-down unit. I went into the room to assess her and noticed something was off

with her right foot. Using knowledge from prior experience, I knew the risks and factors that

could cause footdrop. I have also seen footdrop happen in several cases and this is what it had

looked like to me. I went and talked with the nurse about getting a boot for the foot. The nurse

came into the room with me and she agreed with me that footdrop was beginning to happen.

Without the experience I had, I would not have picked up on this important finding. Being

exposed to a situation like this in the past, prepared me for this. This is a good example of how

clinical judgement affects the outcome of a patient. If I had not caught it, it may have progressed

to a worse outcome. This is just one of many ways that clinical nursing judgement is used in the

field of healthcare. It is more important than ever for this judgement to be used to provide quality

and efficient care for patients.

 References

1. Calcagni, L., Lindell, D., Weaver, A., & Jackson, M. (2022). Clinical Judgement

Development and Assessment in Clinical Nursing Education. Nurse Educator , 48, 175–

181.

2. Connor , J. (2022). Clinical Judgement in Nursing - An evolutionary concept analysis .

Journal of Clinical Nursing , 32(13–14), 3328–3340.

3. Victor , J. (2017). Improving Clinical Nursing Judgement in Prelicensure Students.

Journal of Nursing Education, 56(12).